If Groucho Marx were still alive and needed job, the perfect one just presented itself. He should be commissioner of the PGA Tour.

Groucho once said, “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others.”

When it comes to protecting the “purity” of golf, Tim Finchem has shown he’s a principled man. Until Sunday, when he turned into Groucho Finchem.

He announced the Tour opposes the ban on belly putters that’s been proposed by the U.S. Golf Association and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club.

If you don’t care for golf, this probably sounds like a silly battle between a bunch of stuffed shirts. But if you’re a fan of principles, you’re calling a penalty stroke on Finchem.

In order to protect the game—and keep it the same as it has always been—he was willing to push Casey Martin and his golf cart over a cliff. Now he doesn’t want to trifle with the well-heeled pros who’ve fallen in love with their bellies—because again, that would be change. For Finchem and the PGA Tour, change is not good.

Martin, as you probably recall, had a circulatory ailment that prevented him from walking an 18-hole course. The golf establishment was sympathetic. But everyone from Finchem to Jack Nicklaus to Arnold Palmer to Martin’s old Stanford teammate Tiger Woods agreed walking was an integral part of the game.

It had been since the R&A started making rules in the 1750s. Never mind that, Martin sued in 1997 under the American Disabilities Act. The case dragged on four years. Every hearing was a P.R. disaster for the Tour. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled against the Tour, but the damage was worth it to Finchem.

“I don’t have any regrets. I think we handled it right,” he said. “I think we made the case we had to make.”

He was doing what he felt he had to do—protect the game’s tradition.

Tradition dictated that golfers walk in real competition.

It also says they swing a golf club in real competition.

At least they did. Now if gripping a putter feels like holding a live rattlesnake, golfers anchor a hockey stick thingamajig against their gut or chest and turns into a human pendulum.

That’s the crux of the belly putter brouhaha that has engulfed golf. The USGA and R&A decided belly putters are cheat sticks three months ago. As with Martin’s case, luminaries from Palmer to Rory McIlroy to Woods agreed.

“I just believe that the art of putting is swinging the club and controlling the nerves and it as a fixed point,” Tiger said. “It’s something that’s not in the traditions of the game.”

And golf is nothing if not hidebound by tradition. The ban won’t actually go into effect until 2016, so pros would have ample time to pry those sticks out of their cold, dead fingers.

A 90-day review period ended last week, and most figured the PGA Tour would go along with the ban. Then it upstaged the Match Play Championship by announcing the troops were in revolt.

“They can’t prove there’s a benefit in using the long putter,” Steve Stricker said.

They can’t. But it is odd that it was Stricker who initially said a long putter offers a “huge advantage.” So what happened to that advantage in the past three months?

Pros started bellyaching. Club manufacturers hinted at lawsuits. The sky started falling.

Finchem and others decided to protect the Tour.

“We’re at a point in time in the game of golf that we’re trying to keep players, to lure players into playing the game,” said Stricker, a member of the Tour policy board. “And we feel—a majority of players feel that it only puts a negative spin on that.”

Negative spin? Nothing was more negative than kicking the legs out from under Martin. Besides, do you know what would really lure more people to play golf?

A mulligan on every hole. Four-hour rounds or the marshal kicks you out. Greens fees that are less than a car payment.

Players should be concerned about the game’s popularity, but it’s not their job to bend the rules to enhance it.

When a 14-year-old finds a belly putter gives him a better stroke, it’s time to do something.

That time should have come 30 years ago, when belly putters first appeared. You can see why players who’ve grown up and gotten rich with them would think it’s unfair. But hey, this is golf.

It was never meant to be fair. Overcoming that intrinsic unfairness of bad lies, bad backs, bad nerves and bad fortune is the essence of the game.

Even if you don’t buy the case against belly putters, it doesn’t matter. The R&A and the USGA have always been recognized as the golf’s Supreme Court.

They make the rules. Tours worldwide obey.

That was the PGA Tour’s problem with Martin. It feared that allowing him to play would open a Pandora’s box, but he was unique.

There just aren’t a lot of disabled people who can shoot 65. There are a lot of disabled putting strokes out there.

They’ll be spilling out of a Pandora’s box wielding 52-inch wands. That’s the kind of vision that used to keep Finchem up at night.

“As difficult as this was for everybody,” Tour attorney William Maledon said after the Martin verdict, “this truly was a matter of principle.”

The Tour felt obligated to stand up to a guy who couldn’t walk. Now it’s protecting the “integrity” of the game by allowing pros to continue to use long putters, basically bowing to a bunch of guys with the yips.